1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for displaying drawing data to be used in a direct drawing apparatus in advance.
2. Description of the Background Art
In recent years, a mode (hereinafter, referred to as a “direct drawing mode”) for directly drawing a pattern on a drawing object such as a semiconductor substrate or the like from design data in a vector format which is designed by using CAD (Computer Aided Design) or the like, without using any photomask.
In an apparatus (hereinafter, referred to as a “direct drawing apparatus”) for drawing a pattern in the direct drawing mode, drawing is performed by using raster data which is generated by performing RIP (Raster Image Processing) development of the design data in the vector format.
In a case of using such a direct drawing mode, it is necessary to check the raster data itself to determine whether the RIP development is performed properly or not.
Japanese Patent Application Laid Open Gazette No. 2008-277730, for example, discloses a technique in which at least one of the design data in the vector format and run-length data which is obtained by performing RIP development of the whole of design data is converted into comparable data and both data in comparable data format are compared with each other, to thereby detect whether there is a difference between these data or not.
Further, Japanese Patent Application Laid Open Gazette No. 2006-330184, for example, discloses a technique in which the whole of design data in the vector format is once subjected to RIP development, to thereby display the whole of RIP data with low resolution, and an area thereof in which, particularly, something like shape and/or the like is needed to be checked is displayed, being enlarged with high resolution. An operator enlarges the RIP data of the specified area and visually checks the RIP data.
Such RIP development is performed on the basis of a predetermined RIP parameter which is set in advance. An operator, however, sometimes needs to change the RIP parameter immediately before the drawing operation because of, for example, conditions for a process, such as conditions of an etching solution, constraints due to specs (specifications) of a direct drawing apparatus, change of the principle of the drawing, or the like. In such a case, since there is a possibility of making an error in setting a new RIP parameter, or the like, it is necessary for the operator to immediately check a pattern represented by image data which is obtained by RIP development on the basis of a newly-set RIP parameter.
In the techniques disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid Open Gazette Nos. 2008-277730 and 2006-330184, it is not possible to immediately check the image data which is obtained by the RIP development on the basis of the newly-set RIP parameter since it takes long perform the RIP development, it takes time and effort to set a RIP parameter, or the like.